Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

528 Sourced Quotes

Rarely has any people enjoyed greater prosperity than we are now enjoying. For this we render heartfelt and solemn thanks to the Giver of Good; and we seek to praise Him -not by words only -but by deeds, by the way in which we do our duty to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Theodore Roosevelt
There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

Theodore Roosevelt
In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American.

Theodore Roosevelt
There is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock market. One method is just pernicious to the body politic as the other kind.

Theodore Roosevelt
A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals.

Theodore Roosevelt
A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

Theodore Roosevelt
All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.

Theodore Roosevelt
I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.

Theodore Roosevelt
The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.

Theodore Roosevelt
I enter a most earnest plea that in our hurried and rather bustling life of today we do not lose the hold that our forefathers had on the Bible. I wish to see the Bible study as much a matter of course in the secular colleges as in the seminary. No educated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible, and no uneducated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

Theodore Roosevelt
The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

Theodore Roosevelt
It pays no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time.

Theodore Roosevelt
The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.

Theodore Roosevelt
There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning.. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times.

Theodore Roosevelt
It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children.

Theodore Roosevelt
The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.

Theodore Roosevelt
I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Theodore Roosevelt
The only tyrannies from which men, women and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities.

Theodore Roosevelt
What counts in a man or in a nation is not what the man or the nation can do, but what he or it actually does.

Theodore Roosevelt
Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.

Theodore Roosevelt
More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt
Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.

Theodore Roosevelt
Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character.

Theodore Roosevelt
It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.

Theodore Roosevelt
What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice.

Theodore Roosevelt
No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character.

Theodore Roosevelt
We have duties to others, and duties to ourselves, and we cannot shirk either.

Theodore Roosevelt
We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

Theodore Roosevelt
There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel.

Theodore Roosevelt
There is nothing more practical than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions of mankind

Theodore Roosevelt